The Experience of Financial Well-Being, Shame, and Mental Health Outcomes in Seminary Students

Abstract

The experience of pursuing a graduate seminary education is rife with many stressors, including the heavy financial burden required to fund a seminary degree. Shame, understood as an experience of being unworthy and inadequate at one's core, may be a natural reaction to financial hardship as many individuals may believe their inadequacy is the cause of their financial difficulties. The present study assessed 189 graduate seminary students from institutions accredited by the Association of Theological Schools to further understand the relationships between shame, financial distress, depression, anxiety, and spiritual well-being. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that financial wellbeing and shame would be negatively correlated. Furthermore, we hypothesized that shame would mediate the relationship between financial well-being and a number of negative outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and lack of spiritual well-being. Our findings demonstrated that the seminary population experienced shame in regard to perceived lack of financial well-being; shame was significantly and negatively related to financial well-being and significantly mediated the relationship between financial well-being and depression, anxiety, and spiritual well-being. These results indicate that financial hardship, including student debt, appears to have a far-reaching impact that causes distress on various levels for seminary students and that shame may be an important mechanism in understanding how this happens.

Spiritual Formation in Theological Education: A Multi-case Exploration on Seminaries and Student Development

“…Work related to the spiritual formation of students, which can be curricular or co-curricular in nature, has now been codified into current (and perhaps even more so, future) accreditation standards in graduate-level theological education programs (Reisz, 2003). Moreover, in recent years, empirical studies into the spiritual formation of both seminary students (e.g., Blea et al, 2021;Jankowski et al, 2021) as well as seminary faculty (Hydinger et al, 2022) have also proliferated. Despite these developments, however, no widely agreed upon models nor standards of best practice (or even common practice) exist to guide seminaries as they implement such formation-related training within their degree programs, or as they seek to assess the quality or effectiveness of such training.…”

Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Relationship between Prayer Type and Mental Health before and through the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Consequently, they face many occupational-type hazards due to the complex and public-facing nature of their roles, including presumptive expectations, personal criticisms, ambiguous boundaries (Lee and Iverson-Gilbert 2003), loneliness (Terry and Cunningham 2020) and stress impinged upon their own family connections (Darling et al 2004). Navigating these powerful interactive systems (e.g., family pressures, peer expectations, congregant needs) can be especially challenging and may downregulate the well-being of clergy and congregant members (Grosch and Olsen 2000), resulting in shame and poor mental health (Blea et al 2021).…”

“…Financial burden is a reality for many seminarians given the rising costs of higher education and the relatively low earning potential of their chosen field; however, this goes beyond material pragmatics. One study found that the negative relationship between financial well-being and mental illness, in the form of depression and anxiety, was mediated by shame (Blea et al 2021). While the precise reason for this relationship requires further investigation, it is clear that the stresses that seminarians face can have a deeply personal impact and contribute to mental illness.…”